11 comments:

My dear Lady, thank you for showing this to me first. I am honoured, truly.

That said, this isn't yet a poem. It's too raw, too close to the subject. You need to step back and edit, hard. Find the essence and lose the unnecessary words, the unneeded explanations. Cut to the quick, and there will be a fine poem there.

I hope you will forgive me comments, as they are meant in the best way. x

I am sorry for your loss, even when we don't have the best of relationships with family members, their loss is surely felt. I think all of that shows through here, memories all mixed up in good and bad, but memories, and love, all the same.

Dear Antonia, I spent a few years in Puerto Ordaz myself and relate to this piece very much. I wouldn't be surprise that we crossed path at some point. I enjoyed the narrative of this piece and I think you can use some more imagery to describe the where about's of that wonderful city and add flavor to the story since you mentioned the cities and the Orinoco. (Those places are deeply rooted in my heart...) Poetically there is a lot of potential yet I would rather like this more as a short story where you can unleash all those feelings you have wondering and raving inside...

Thank you for alerting me to your new piece, Antonia, and for asking me to give an opinion.

The subject is a difficult one to render into poetry that conveys emotional depth and leaves the reader with empathy. I feel a coldness, even bitterness, in the piece but it is stated, not conveyed through imagery, and I don't feel the love the poem claims the "I" has for her sister. Feeling is too constrained, as if the truth were too much to put down. The bitterness of not being informed about the death is not, I think, what you want readers to take away.

What you have written contains possibilities that have not yet been realized as poetry. There is more telling than showing (through imagery, metaphor, etc.), the line breaks seem too arbitrary, and I don't understand some of the punctuation. The piece makes allusions that don't help get to the heart of what you want the piece to evoke. The last stanza, which ends in an unfortunate cliche, I would argue to delete entirely.

Imagine that gardenia as a metaphor; what might you do with that to evoke the memory of the sister and the pain of her loss? (That could be a poem itself.) How is the smell of the incense like sorrow? What more might you make of the story of "my Roma grandmother" and the alluded-to parallel; how might imagery convey the feeling attending both events. What does a death in a tropical town like Puerto Ordaz look like? What do you want your reader to understand from that title?

Once again dear Antonia, I feel the same way as Maureen and I will stick to my initial commentary. The landscape where this events are happening is rich enough and full of potential to be exploited to convey the message rather than being direct. I think this rather have more potential as a short story than poetry as it is in my opinion.

I woud make an example here based on the 4th initial verses:

"Soul empty funeral chambers, shattering generations of logic and light, decomposed in blue orealong the Orinoco flowing banks, where she was an unknown ghost..."

As you see, the potential is there and you need to use the environment and rich imagery to convey your point rather than to tell the story straight if you want to make this a poem. I think as a story the potential exist. As a poem, this is far from being there yet dear Antonia!

i'm sorry for your loss antonia... yet to grieve...yet to forgive... forgiving sometimes takes its time.. the hate and love with equal intensity... that can be overpowering for sure... hope you find that balance and bridge that helps you find peace in this..